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A Repository Of Law Review Publication Agreements

Here is a great new resource that I first noticed over at Law Librarians -- The PrawfsBlawg has compiled a number of law review publication agreements.You can find the whole spreadsheet of the compiled law review publication agreements here.

As noted, "[i]t might be useful for folks to have access to law reviews' publication agreements, whether to help with negotiations, compare copyright provisions, or whatever. [PrawfsBlawg] has begun a spreadsheet with links to such agreements that are available on the web. If you are aware of other such links, please add them in the comments to the [PrawfsBlawg] post or email [PrawfsBlawg] directly, slawsky *at* law *dot* uci *dot* edu," and the agreements will be added to the spreadsheet.

PrawfsBlawg is interested in links to any law review publication agreements, whether main journal, secondary journal, peer-reviewed, or student reviewed.

I have a forthcoming article coming out titled, How Law Librarians Can Assist with Law Journal Publication Agreements. In the article, I talk about the necessity of looking at other law journals' publication agreements as samples when journals are updating their own. One of the key considerations in law review publication agreements, today, is open access. It is a great idea to keep open access in mind and allow authors to retain the right to distribute their articles at places like SSRN.

Open access will inevitably create a wider readership base because the articles will generally be discoverable through Google searches. In this day and age, when many researchers are relying primarily on convenient resources on Google, it is a great idea to broaden the current scholarship available and help prevent the very narrow scholarship that might otherwise be churned out.

Thanks to PrawfsBlawg for taking the initiative to start this great repository of which we can all benefit!

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